For most Americans, the ideal meal is fast, cheap, and tasty.Food,
Inc. examines the costs of putting value and convenience over nutrition and
environmental impact.
Director Robert Kenner explores the subject from all angles, talking to
authors, advocates, farmers, and CEOs, like co-producer Eric Schlosser (Fast
Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma), Gary Hirschberg
(Stonyfield Farms), and Barbara Kowalcyk, who's been lobbying for more rigorous
standards since E. coli claimed the life of her two-year-old son.
The filmmaker takes his camera into slaughterhouses and factory farms where
chickens grow too fast to walk properly, cows eat feed pumped with toxic
chemicals, and illegal immigrants risk life and limb to bring these products to
market at an affordable cost. If eco-docs tends to preach to the converted,
Kenner presents his findings in such an engaging fashion thatFood,
Inc. may well reach the very viewers who could benefit from it the most:
harried workers who don't have the time or income to read every book and eat
non-genetically modified produce every day.